LETTERS

What’s logic of relocating air quality monitor station?

Posted 9/30/14

To the Editor:

Where is the sense in moving air quality monitors away from the tot park that is currently being planned for an area that is downwind of departing jets? This is evidently what RIAC …

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LETTERS

What’s logic of relocating air quality monitor station?

Posted

To the Editor:

Where is the sense in moving air quality monitors away from the tot park that is currently being planned for an area that is downwind of departing jets? This is evidently what RIAC (the Rhode Island Airport Corporation) may possibly do. 

On Aug. 5, RIAC released a Technical Memorandum on the “Relocation of the Pembroke Monitoring Station,” with plans to place its air quality monitoring station “230 yards almost directly south of its (then) current location.”  RIAC noted that the contractor had already bid on that location. A deviation from this plan to a location farther afield would, of course, require a contractor’s change order. Additional expenses would be incurred.

The Airport Corporation is currently soliciting public comments in an effort to weigh the possibility of spending additional funds to move the monitor a significant distance from the tot park. Would this make any sense? I can’t come up with any good public-health reason to do so.

The idea behind the monitor is to put it where the action is, close to where people could be exposed to cancer- and asthma-causing bad air from jet engine exhausts. The currently proposed location is a good one – 230 yards south of the planned tot park. Those bringing children to this park need to know if conditions are safe there. Is there any better location for the monitoring station? I think not.

Here’s one possible reason why airport management might seek public approval to locate the monitor farther away from the tot park: it is currently picking up unacceptable levels of carcinogenic pollutants at the tot park location. A 230-yard move would not change those readings very much, if at all. But a big move, possibly closer to Warwick Pond, would surely diminish the likelihood of public outcry to close down the tot park and the new ball fields, based on air data.

This all begs the question of what would motivate anyone to put a tot park and ball fields right in the thick of some really bad air. It would be much like Warwick’s own Love Canal – that cancer pit near Niagara Falls. If RIAC can find fault with this Love Canal analogy, then its Board should prove it by assigning the air quality monitor to the site that it (RIAC) initially proposed – 230 yards south of the new tot park. It would save money in the short run and, very possibly, the health of our children in the long run. That’s a clear and unambiguous view that everyone can share. 

Richard Langseth,

Executive Director

Greenwich Bay

Watershed Group,

Warwick

 

Editor’s note: The Rhode Island Airport Corporation will conduct a public hearing on the relocation of the air quality monitoring station tonight beginning at 6 at Buttonwoods Community Center.

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